Reinhold Weber » admin

Symfony 2 Preview – It has never been so easy

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:53:15 +0000

The Symfony PHP Framework has, in the past, alienated a lot of developers solely because it was quite a hassle to setup on shared hosting or a local server environment.

What’s new in Symfony 2.0?

Requires PHP5.3.2+
Doctrine 2 (Active Record is replaced by Entity Pattern, completely rewritten codebase for PHP5.3)
PHPUnit for testing, lime is out for good
Logging and caching with Zend Framework
Access to remote APIs (web services, feeds, etc.)
Support for Lucene indexes
PDf generation
Queueing
Cloud computing (storage, DBs, message queues)
Forms2, the new form framework
Web Debug Toolbar

You can setup the symfony 2.0 sandbox on a local server in 7 steps under a local MAMPP environment on a Mac.

The symfony sandbox is a Symfony project where all the required libraries and some simple controllers are already included and where the basic configuration is already done.

Download the sandbox
Unpack sandbox in your htdocs folder
Check your local server environment with http://localhost:8888/sandbox/web/check.php
Check a first webpage in the development environment at http://localhost:8888/sandbox/web/index_dev.php/
The sandbox comes with a simple “Hello” app at http://localhost:8888/sandbox/web/index_dev.php/hello/Reinhold%20Weber
Explore the web developer toolbar at the bottom (only available in the dev environment under index_dev)
Configure a virtual host in conf/apache/httpd.conf which points to the sandbox/web/ directory

Welcome to Symfony2.0, available in late 2010 – enjoy the ride. More on the new Symfony version soon.

Write a simple Joomla 1.6 module from scratch

admin — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:31:58 +0000

Create you first Joomla 1.6 module completely from scratch.

Joomla, as of version 1.5 which was a complete rewrite is based on the MVC design pattern which makes creating modules extremely easy and structured. Joomla 1.6 changes a few things, the basics however remain the same.

Create a folder called mod_helloworld in modules
Create a mod_helloworld.php file
Create a mod_helloworld.xml file
Create a helper.php file
Create a template file tmpl/default.php
Discover new modules by going to “Extension Manager” -> “Discover”

The code for mod_helloworld.php


defined('_JEXEC') or die; // no direct access allowed
 
require_once dirname(__FILE__).DS.'helper.php'; // get helper files
 
$hello = modHelloWorldHelper::getHello($params);
require JModuleHelper::getLayoutPath('mod_helloworld');
?>

The helper.php file


	class modHelloWorldHelper
	{
	    /**
	     * Retrieves the hello message
	     *
	     * @param array $params An object containing the module parameters
	     * @access public
	     */    
	    function getHello( $params )
	    {
	        return 'Hello, World!';
	    }
	}
?>

Include the template file for the default view


defined('_JEXEC') or die;
echo $hello; 
?>

The helloworld.xml file

	 version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
	 type="module" version="1.6.0" client="site" method="upgrade">
	    >Hello World!>
	    >Reinhold Weber>
	    >1.6.0>
	    >Reinholds simple Hello World module.>
	    >
			  module="mod_helloworld">mod_helloworld.php>
	        >mod_helloworld.xml>
	        >index.html>
	        >helper.php>
	        >tmpl/default.php>
	        >tmpl/index.html>
	    >
	    >
	    >
	>

Create both index.html files to prevent direct directory browsing

Create your first simple Drupal 7 module

admin — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:50:32 +0000

Create your first Drupal 7 module with the following steps.

Create a folder called helloworld in sites/all/modules/custom
Create a helloworld.info file
Create a template file page-helloworld.tpl.php in your theme directory
Enable your module at http://domain.com/admin/build/modules
Visit http://domain.com/helloworld

This belongs into your helloworld.info file

; $Id$
 
name = helloworld
description = Reinholds Hello World module
package = Reinholds modules
core = 7.x
 
files[] = helloworld.module

The helloworld.module file


	function helloworld_menu(){
	  $items = array();
 
	  $items['helloworld'] = array(
	    'title'            => t('Hello world'),
	    'page callback'    => 'helloworld_output',
	    'access arguments' => array('access content'),
	  );
 
	  return $items;
	}
 
	/*
	* Display output
	*/
	function helloworld_output() {
	  header('Content-type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8');
	  header('Content-Disposition: inline');
	  return 'helloworld';
	}
?>

The theme template file page-helloworld.tpl.php


print $content;
?>

Drupal 7 Themes – Browser specific CSS

admin — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:08:56 +0000

In Drupal 6 you had to target IE specific CSS files by adding lines to your page.tpl.php or use an additional module which allows you to target browsers inside your theme.info file.

In Drupal 7 however, the recommended way is by using the use drupal_add_css() function in your template.php file.

function mytheme_preprocess_html(&$vars) {
  drupal_add_css(path_to_theme() . '/fix-ie.css', array('weight' => CSS_THEME, 'browsers' => array('IE' => 'lt IE 7', '!IE' => FALSE), 'preprocess' => FALSE));
}

Hello world!

admin — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:36:40 +0000

Welcome to my new blog. The old one got old, so I decided to start with a clean slate. If you came here looking for an old post, I’m very sorry, that’s life I guess, out with the old, in with the new.

I’m a web developer working with Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, Zend Framework and Magento so this is what I will write about most of the time.

With new major versions of my favorite cms (WP3, Drupal 7 and Joomla 1.6) dropping on the internets this summer there will be a lot to talk about.

Enjoy & happy coding